Description

The needs of society trump the whims of the individual members. At least
that is what your answers indicate.
Communitarianism is the norm in traditional societies, where there is agreement
on community values.
Where there are multiple cultures under the same government, communitarianism
is rather more challenging. Whose standards do you enforce? Who gets to
control the economy?

While there is no major communitarian political party in the United States,
there are plenty of communitarians running under the banner of both the
major parties. You just need to look at the candidates individually.

Campaign 2016

Good new for you: both major parties have nominated big government Presidential
candidates! The Era of Small Government is over! (Unless a third party candidate
sneaks in.) Take your pick:

Utopian Dreams for Communitarians

Imagine big government that makes people shape up. To do so you need a mix of
lefty and conservative
utopias.

Political Parties and Candidates

The American Solidarity Party
is a Christian Democratic party which is pro life across the board. They call for
generous welfare benefits funded by ground rents, and for backing off of some of
the more punitive aspects of our justice system. But unlike most left wing parties,
they would make abortion illegal and support religious freedom even outside church
buildings.

Resources for Communitarians

Some links for people who want a secure moral society to live in, and
opt for an active government to provide it.

If you want government to reflect the will of the community, you need
better elections than the primitive plurality voting system we use in the
U.S. for most offices.
Plurality voting boils the choices down to two, which is not good if the
candidate reflecting your ideology is also corrupt.
Have a look at Range Voting.
You have seen it in action for deciding contests and judged sports like
figure skating. It works for choosing the best candidate for office as well.

So you want more morality, but you also want the economic security which
comes from the modern welfare state.
Alas, welfare as we know it is the biggest destroyer of families today.
Fortunately, there is a solution: replace most need-based welfare with
unconditionalfree money.
The idea may seem wacky and simplistic, but many famous economists of both the
left and right have endorsed the idea. And here are articles relating how
free money can help restore family values and
reduce crime.

Fortunately for you, there are many communitarian countries around the
world. Visit them! You might just find a community where you truly belong.
Or you might find you miss the chaos and opportunity of more open societies,
and adjust your political philosophy based upon new data. Either way, you
benefit.

The Good Government Reading List

Regardless of your core political values, this
list of books on law, economics, politics, and
social problems should add useful items to your
mental toolset. These books (and one TV series)
range from easy to
challenging.

Utopias and Dystopias

Just what is the optimal type of government? If government should be big,
what should it do and who should run it? If government should be small
or nonexistent, what should take its place? Should we embrace The Singularity
or should we retreat back to Ecotopia?
Is democracy optimal, or should we go back to monarchy? Maybe we should
just let the mafia run things...

Sometimes the best way to explore these questions is to run a mental
simulation through fiction. And so writers have promoted their ideas
in utopian fiction and blasted ideas they disliked in dystopian fiction.

Here is an eclectic list of some of my favorites. You will find dystopias
with runaway government which makes you long for liberty, and runaway corporations
which make you long for more government. There are hippytopias and conservative
Christian utopias. There are stealth utopian works disguised as comedies and even
a crime novel. And there are few which are ambiguous as to whether they are
utopian or dystopian works.

Not included here are the usual suspects. For the most part I have also omitted overly preachy
works; I made a very few exceptions because the utopias described were just
so different as to make the works interesting on that count. The rest stand
on the merits of their interesting plots.
Enjoy.

This is the short list. For more utopian and dystopian works see
here.